Culture Juice Research report

Breaking down barriers to young peoples accessibility to the arts

Dr Susan Berridge, Research Assistant, University of Stirling Dr Doris Ruth Eikhof, Lecturer, University of Stirling

Executive Summary
Background
Culture Juice was a joint project by the Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, comprising of Royal Lyceum Theatre, Usher Hall, Traverse Theatre and Edinburgh Filmhouse and their technology partner, tictoc. The central aim of the project was to expand the venues audience reach into younger audiences who are typically non-attenders. The existing audiences of all four venues are ageing and attracting a younger demographic is seen as vital to the organisations respective futures. Culture Juice was awarded 62,234 by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland.

The project
Culture Juice is a dedicated website, with mobile and desktop versions, that offers students and young professionals reduced-price tickets for certain events at the four venues. The original intention was to create Culture Juice as a one-stop-shop website where users could purchase discounted tickets for any of the four participating venues. This one-stop-shop was to encourage cross-promotion across the venues programmes, but the four venues box office systems turned out to be incompatible. As a result of this technical challenge, the four arts organisations instead collaborated on a digital marketing project with the aim of engaging new cultural consumers, encouraging cross-promotion and cross-attendance between the four venues and harnessing changing behaviours in booking patterns.

Results
Market research in early 2013 yielded largely feedback and tictoc built the desktop and mobile versions of the website in February 2013. Culture Juice launched at Freshers Week in September 2013. At the end of the funded period, the site was still to be populated with content and further marketing was needed. Culture Juice has inspired in these marketing departments new approaches to marketing.

The project has raised confidence within the arts organisations marketing departments in terms of identifying and applying for future funding streams. For the wider sector Culture Juice offers a valuable case study for using digital marketing in broadening audiences.

Insights
At the outset, the overall concept for the project seemed relatively straightforward. However, it soon emerged that the collaboration of four arts organisations created unexpected challenges. These challenges included project scope, technical infrastructure, organisational policies and project organisation. The most significant challenge was the incompatibility of the different box office systems held by the four venues, preventing the original plan of creating Culture Juice as an Amazon-style one-stop-shop website. Key learnings include the following: It is important to be ambitious in terms project aims and, but simultaneously, to be realistic in terms of operation and project management. Allocating dedicated blocks of time to working on the project is crucial for the project to be effective. Record core values, principles and mechanics of the project for both strategy and delivery. Such records help keep the project on track and facilitate decisions-making. A clear focus from the outset is important in order to effectively utilise the limited time available for planning and execution. If a project involves collaboration between multiple arts organisations, the appointment of a project manager to oversee project activity can be helpful.

Future
Important next steps are to populate the Culture Juice site with content, secure buy-in from the sales teams of the four organisations and market the site further using data gathered at the Freshers Week launch. Once populated with content and marketed, further data needs to be gathered and evaluated to assess if Culture Juice has achieved its original aims of diversifying the four venues audiences, encouraging cross-promotion and cross-attendance and deepening the engagement of young people with the organisations. Further research is also needed regarding users experiences of the site.

1. Background
The Edinburgh Cultural Quarter (ECQ) consists of four arts venues located in close proximity to one another in the west end of the city: the Royal Lyceum, the Usher Hall, the Traverse and Filmhouse. The Lyceum is one of Scotlands largest producing companies. Its main output is a season of drama productions that runs from September to May which is housed in the Royal Lyceum theatre, a grand 1 Victorian building, built in 1883 and taken over by the Royal Lyceum company in 1965. In addition, it
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http://www.lyceum.org.uk/about-the-lyceum/

stages a family show each Christmas as well as productions by the Lyceum Youth Theatre and it is the Scottish home to the NT Connections national showcase festival of youth theatre. The Lyceum also hosts touring companies and Edinburgh International Festival shows. The Usher Hall is a large, council-owned concert hall of international renown, which was founded in 2 1896 after Andrew Usher made a gift of 100,000 to the City of Edinburgh. It is one of Edinburghs key venues for national and international orchestras and has been the main venue for the Edinburgh International Festival since 1947. It also regularly hosts diverse music and events, including rock, pop, jazz, comedy, talks, school concerts, conferences, ceremonies, lectures and recording sessions. The Traverse is a small studio theatre and from its conception in 1963, it has been committed to risktaking and producing innovative performances. It is unique in Scotland in terms of providing the infrastructure, professional support and expertise to ensure the development of a dynamic theatre 3 culture, by commissioning and developing new plays or adaptations. Each year, it produces on average six Traverse Theatre Company productions or co-productions, along with presenting a range of productions from visiting companies from across the UK, including new plays, adaptations, dance, physical theatre and contemporary music. It moved into its current premises on Cambridge Street in 1992. Filmhouse is an independent cinema with three fully accessible screens, which shows a wide variety of films from across the world and frequently hosts Q&A and panel discussions. Since its inception, Filmhouse has been the home of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) and has hosted many screenings and events as part of the festival. EIFF and Filmhouse formalised their collaborative relationship in 2009 with the formation of the Centre for the Moving Image, a registered charity which 4 comprises Filmhouse, EIFF and Edinburgh Film Guild. The cinema also screens films on demand, via the Filmhouse Player, another initiative created via the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland. The Lyceum originally identified the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland as a way to develop their website, intending on submitting a sole application. However, after Shirley Monteith, Marketing th Manager of the Lyceum, attended a Nesta Digital Day held in Perth on the 6 of March 2012 at the encouragement of the venues Chief Executive, she realised that the Fund potentially offered a much greater opportunity. As she explained, that workshop made us have to start thinking out the box a 5 little bit and more ambitiously about what we could do with the funding. For some time, the Chief Executives of the four organisations had been keen to explore the potential of collaboration between the venues, particularly in relation to cross-promotion and encouraging cross-attendance of their respective audiences. Due to their close proximity, the venues had worked together before, but only on a very ad hoc basis. The name Edinburgh Cultural Quarter also already existed as a way to refer 6 to the four organisations, but only in an informal way. The Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland offered a valuable opportunity to explore the potential of collaboration in a more concrete and holistic manner. Consequently, the Chief Executives of the four organisations encouraged members of their respective marketing departments to attend another Nesta Digital Day held in Glasgow a week later th on 14 March 2012. After attending this Digital Day and meeting with four potential technology providers, the project leads chose to partner with tictoc. There was no pre-existing relationship between any of the four venues and tictoc, but the project partners felt that tictoc demonstrated a clear understanding of [their] need to develop a digital platform that will target a specific audience and allow the partners to cross7 promote engagement with [their] artistic programmes.

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http://www.usherhall.co.uk/screenloader.aspx?page=style/UsherHall/history.html&type=include http://www.traverse.co.uk/about-us/the-traverse/ 4 http://www.filmhousecinema.com/about-us/ 5 Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013. 6 Interview with Shirley Monteith, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, 28th November 2012. 7 Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland Application, April 2012.

Tictoc is a digital agency with offices in Glasgow and London and a staff of 22, specialising in designing and building website and apps as well as developing long-term strategies to deliver a real and valuable return on investment for our clients. Tictoc work across a broad sector, with particular expertise of working in charity and education, and are keen to develop further into the arts in order to 8 diversify their client base and markets. Previous clients from the charity and education sectors include Wood Green, a charity devoted to dog, cat and animal rehoming and Forth Valley and Morley Colleges. Previous clients from the arts and culture sector include Park Circus, a Glasgow-based film distribution company and the publishing company Penguin. The key project partners named in the application are predominantly based in the respective marketing departments of the four organisations and include Shirley Monteith, Marketing Manager of the Royal Lyceum, Karl Chapman, General Manager of the Usher Hall, Ross Perth, the Marketing Manager of Filmhouse and Sarah Dee, the Communications Officer of the Traverse. Rebecca McGann, Digital Marketing Officer of the Traverse, took over from Dee and Tessa MacGregor, the Communications Officer of the Usher Hall took over from Chapman later on in the project. Kate Wooding, Business Development Director, was the original point of contact with the Technology Partner, tictoc. Kate worked with the four organisations on the funding application, bringing in strategists and technical leads from tictoc to delineate the technical parameters of the project from the outset. Once the funding had been secured, Kerry Reid, Account Director at tictoc, assumed the Project Manager role, heading up a team of seven and also acting as the primary point of contact for 9 the organisations. The central aim of the project was to expand the venues audience reach. Specifically, the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland offered the organisations the chance to address a mutual area of concern: how to reach and engage with younger audiences who are typically non-attenders. The existing audiences of all four venues are ageing and, thus, attracting a younger demographic is seen as vital to the organisations respective futures. Shirley Monteith explained that young people may view the venues as expensive and elitist, with two of the theatres in particular, The Usher Hall and 10 Lyceum, being housed in large, imposing buildings that may seem intimidating to young people. Thus, from the outset, the project partners were keen to break down potential barriers for young people to attend their venues. In response to these concerns, Culture Juice was conceived as a dedicated website, with mobile and desktop versions, that offered students and young professionals reduced-price tickets for certain events at the four venues. It was hoped that such an additional marketing and sales channel would enable the four arts organisations to expand their audience into a younger demographic, thereby growing future core audiences and generating additional revenue now and securing future income streams. Reaching younger demographics and growing them into a core audience is a particular challenge for performing arts venues. Arts venues such as theatres, concert halls and cinemas compete for audiences time and leisure time budgets not only amongst themselves, but also with other entertainment offering such as sport, exercise, clubbing and socialising (Hesmondhalgh 2007). With respect to younger age groups, the recent explosion of digitally facilitated entertainment from social media to online gaming and films on demand has intensified the competition for audiences. A particular concern for theatres, concert halls and cinemas is that digital entertainment can typically be consumed for a lower price than tickets for a live show or a movie. Reaching out to younger audiences via a medium than plugs into these audiences preferred means of communication (online) and promotes theatre, live music and cinema as affordable and attractive leisure pursuits is thus of interest not only for the Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, but for arts organisations more widely. Other arts

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Interview with Kerry Reid, tictoc, January 2013. Interview with Kerry Reid, tictoc, 22nd January 2013. 10 Interview with Shirley Monteith, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, 28th November 2012.

organisations can also learn about the benefits of employing digital technology in their sales and marketing, in order to increase and potentially diversify their audiences. As tictocs project lead Kerry Reid explained, arts organisations need to adapt to changing ticket buying behaviours and, specifically, changing audience expectations about the ability to purchase tickets online and via mobile platforms. Digital ticketing options have the potential to engage with 11 audiences in a deeper way than the traditional dissemination of a bi-annual brochure may do. In addition, Culture Juice comprised not only the development of a sales and marketing tool, but also a collaboration of four arts organisations. It therefore offered opportunities for collaboration and crosspromotion between venues that other arts organisations could potentially learn from.

2. The project
The original research proposition for Culture Juice was to explore a cross-art-form partnership, 12 putting digital practices at the heart of attracting new cultural consumers. The aims of the project, as stated in the funding application, were to:

develop a digital solution that will allow each of the partners to work together to target and engage specific audiences, particularly young adults, students and young professionals who make up a large proportion of Festival audiences but arent so visible through the rest of the year facilitate the cross-promotion and audience development of the four artistic programmes harness changing behaviours in booking patterns supporting more flexible booking and 13 meeting the expectations of mobile and online platforms

More specifically, the project partners wished to use mobile-friendly technology to reach their target audiences; provide listings for what is on at all four organisations in order to encourage and harness flexible booking behaviour; stimulate promotional dialogue on social media platforms; create a solution to allow audiences to book tickets quickly and easily online and through mobile technology, thereby encouraging repeat bookings and loyalty; provide additional and interactive content and 14 develop a platform that is easy to find using search engines and well integrated with social media. The original timeline for the project, as set out in the application, began with project scoping and strategy development in July 2012. At the same time tictoc were to develop the wireframes and functionalities for the platforms. August 2012 was to be dedicated to the visual design of the platforms. The creation of the content management system to allow the four organisations to input information about their own programmes would take place in September 2012, as would the page template programming and eNewsletter template build. In October 2012, research was to be undertaken into competitors and training between tictoc and the project partners would begin. In December 2012, the mobile site and app would be built, leading to user-testing in January 2013, a 15 soft launch in February 2013, and further marketing and promotion in March and April 2013. However, these timelines were soon subjected to change as the project partners made an important realisation: the different box office systems of the four venues were incompatible and, thus, the original intention of creating Culture Juice as an Amazon-style one-stop-shop website was impossible. Instead, it was decided that the website would feature discount codes which would then be used on
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Interview with Kerry Reid, tictoc, 22 January 2013. Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Powerpoint Presentation, Nesta Workshop, 1st June 2012. 13 Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland Application, April 2012. 14 Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland Application, April 2012. 15 Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland Application, April 2012.

the respective organisations website (for further information, see the section on Insights). In response to this challenge, the project evolved to focus on the possibility of using collaborative digital marketing to reach new and younger cultural consumers and encourage cross-promotion and crossattendance across the four venues. The project partners realised that they first needed to create a coherent brand identity for the Cultural Quarter that would fit with all four venues. Developing such a brand identity had not been part of the original programme of work for the project but it emerged as necessary in order to ensure consistency and effectiveness across future communications activities. Over the summer of 2012, the project leads undertook three brainstorming sessions with the aim of identifying core attributes, benefits and (physical and emotional) reactions to their desired brand and target audience. This exercise yielded a series of key attributes associated with the organisations desired core brand essence, such as dynamic, open-minded, youthful, user-friendly and trustworthy. These attributes were then collated into a single phrase summarising the desired platform: A gateway for infrequent and nonattenders to engage with and experience multiple art-forms through discounting and dynamic, 16 contemporary digital platforms. Once the brand essence was established, the next step was to create the brand itself. With the four arts venues and target audience in mind, the project leads focused on its tone, concept, name and message, drawing on brands that most appeal to youthful audiences for inspiration. After several brainstorming sessions, the project leads decided on the name Culture Juice, designed to appeal directly to a youthful demographic. The project leads felt that this was a strong, creative concept and that it clearly identified the principle of the facility and was quirky, humorous, and had a suitable 17 personality. Playing on the popularity of healthy, youthful beverage brands such as Innocent, the term Culture Juice was underpinned by a belief that culture is good for you and designed to connote 18 an idea of the art forms represented by the four venues being juiced together. Market research into this concept, carried out via a survey to 100 existing friendly users at the beginning of 2013, yielded 19 largely positive feedback which reaffirmed the original brand essence. Having created the core concept of the brand, the project leads then produced a creative brief and worked with IDMD, a brand design company, to create the visuals for the Culture Juice site and for future communications. A series of options were produced and narrowed down to a short list before the final brand identity meeting all the necessary prerequisites including clarity of message, playful in design, intelligent cues and flexibility with options was created. The final brand visual had two typefaces, came in a variety of colours and also featured a simplified graphic icon that could be used 20 as an icon for the app. The technology partner, tictoc, then worked closely with the four organisations to plan, develop and build mobile and desktop prototypes of the website that would host the discounted ticket offers. At the end of 2012, tictoc had produced initial visuals and a working homepage and outlined their design proposal to the project team (Picture 1).

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Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Powerpoint Presentation, Nesta Workshop, 21st September 2012. Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Powerpoint Presentation, Nesta Workshop, 21st September 2012. 18 Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Powerpoint Presentation, Nesta Workshop, 21st September 2012. 19 Field notes from project meeting with Shirley Monteith, Ross Perth, Rebecca McGann, Tessa MacGregor, Lianne Whitelaw, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, April 2013. 20 Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Powerpoint Presentation, Nesta Workshop, 21st September 2012.

Picture 1: Visual prototype of the Culture Juice homepage, created by tictoc In particular, tictoc designed the Culture Juice site to be responsive, with a single URL serving up content appropriate to the device requesting it. This responsiveness potentially enables a more engaging user experience by ensuring that visitors to the site receive the same experience regardless of whether they are using a desktop, laptop, mobile phone or tablet (Picture 2).

Picture 2: Visual prototype of the mobile version of the site The homepage was created with a floating area to ensure that the Culture Juice logo and Juicy Offers search function remain easily accessible on the page at all times. Further features include a filtering function for displaying offers; a differently styled area for displaying non-offers below the offers; a pre-footer area containing information about each of the four venues and a footer area 7

containing social media links. The discounted offers were displayed on the homepage, illustrated by an image of the particular event, play or film, an image of the hosting venue, the event title and a clear written description of the offer. Each of the four venues was also designated an individual colour that 21 aligned with the main Culture Juice brand. Tictoc then met with the team again in January 2013 to finalise minor revisions and built the desktop and mobile versions of the website in February 2013. From here on the project proceeded not quite as quickly as intended. Coordinating the schedules of four distinct organisations turned out to be a mundane but significant challenge. In addition, staff changes on the project team brought in new ideas and the team decided to do further marketing research to test these ideas. Generic copy was written for the Culture Juice site by Rebecca McGann of the Traverse in April 2013 and tictoc provided user-training, however, the organisations still needed 22 to provide their own individual copy and populate the site with content. Provision of copy and content was scheduled to take place in July 2013, but in particular content management across all 23 venues emerged as a tricky issue to resolve. The site was then to be tested by friendly users, most likely the same people used for the market research into the branding, and tictoc would tweak the site in response to their feedback. At the end of the funded period, the four organisations aimed to have a clearer sense of how the Culture Juice website would work. They then intended to train their respective sales teams on how to use the website and answer user queries. In order to encourage buy-in from the sales departments, the project leads had planned to raise awareness of Culture Juice by holding an internal meeting across the organisations and presenting on the project. The final launch of Culture Juice was pushed back and an extension granted by the funders until September 2013. These delays led to the decision to abandon the original plan of a soft launch over the summer of 2013 in favour of a launch in September 2013 to coincide with Freshers Week and new autumn season of events starting at the three theatres. At the end of the funded period, awareness of the Culture Juice site had been raised with students at Freshers Week. The Freshers Week promotion was organised primarily by Shirley Monteith of the Lyceum, along with the Lyceums Communications Manager, Emma Robertson-Werner. Promotional materials were made and used to advertise the site at the launch, including a Culture Juice banner, postcards with information about the site, branded t-shirts and linen tote bags. In particular, the project partners collected data from interested students, including their name, email address, university affiliation and preference of art form (film, music, comedy, dance, drama and/or talks), via postcard flyers that they asked these people to fill in. At the end of the funded period, this data had not yet been used to contact the students directly. It was decided that no one particular organisation should use the information, but rather that tictoc should create an email template for Culture Juice that can be used for future communications. At the end of the funded period, the project partners were still to produce a brief for tictoc to create this template. Further marketing was needed as well as content population of the site by the end of the funded period.

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Culture Juice, Presentation by tictoc, Nesta Workshop, 24th January, 2013. Field notes from project meeting with Shirley Monteith, Ross Perth, Rebecca McGann, Tessa MacGregor, Lianne Whitelaw, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, April 2013. 23 Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013.

3. Results
By the end of the funded period, the Culture Juice site was live, but was yet to be populated with content by the four organisations. Awareness of the site had been raised with students at Freshers Week, but the project partners were yet to use the data gathered from this event to contact these students directly. Further marketing of the site was yet to be undertaken. Thus, it is too early to determine the success of the project in achieving its original aim of attracting and engaging younger audiences. The desktop and mobile versions of the Culture Juice website were built and the four project partners were pleased with the result, commenting on how user-friendly the platforms were, 24 but the websites were still to be tested with external users. However, several other soft benefits have arisen so far from the project. An important soft benefit of the project is that it has built capacity and confidence within the arts 25 organisations marketing teams in terms of identifying and applying to future funding streams. The process of successfully applying to the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland has increased the understanding within the organisations of how such processes are best approached and what is required in terms of presentation, but also in terms of vision. As Shirley Monteith of the Lyceum explained, it is important to look around, attend workshops and see what everybody else is doing, but 26 to then be creative, dont be afraid. Another soft benefit of the project is that it has triggered new approaches to marketing. Working on digital innovation, Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor explained, has improved their thinking and understanding of marketing for arts organisations in general and particularly of the impact digital technology has on traditional marketing practices. It brings, they said, a step change of out with the 27 old marketing and in with the new marketing. A further soft benefit of the project is the strong, cooperative working relationship that has been established between the four venues. This collaborative relationship has potentially laid the groundwork for future marketing initiatives between the Edinburgh Cultural Quarter organisations. In turn, Culture Juice provides a useful case study for collaboration between arts venues in other cities, such as Glasgow or Dundee. The strength of the collaboration between the arts venues and the technology partner constitutes another soft benefit of the project, with all of the project leads speaking positively of their relationship with one another and noting that they would be keen to work together in the future. A soft benefit of Culture Juice for the wider sector is that it provides a valuable case study of using digital marketing for broadening audiences. The innovation of the project lies in the use of digital 28 technology to attract a new audience demographic, rather than in the technology itself. The lessons learned along the way (see section 4, Insights), for instance about creating a shared brand, have built important understandings of what is required to turn the potential benefits of digital technology into real-life assets for arts organisations. The project leads stressed that even if Culture Juice itself ultimately were to be unsuccessful at securing their desired demographic, it will still have been a 29 worthwhile experiment that they and other arts organisations can learn from in the future.

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Field notes from project meeting with Shirley Monteith, Ross Perth, Rebecca McGann, Tessa MacGregor, Lianne Whitelaw (who has now left the project), Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, April 2013. 25 Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013. 26 Interview with Shirley Monteith, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, 28th November 2012. 27 Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013. 28 Interview with Kerry Reid, tictoc, January 2013. 29 Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013.

4. Insights
The project offered an exciting opportunity for all four organisations that very much engaged the project leads and resonated with their specific audience development concerns. The four project leads brought different skillsets technical, creative, PR, audience development so Culture Juice was able to draw on an extensive set of relevant expertise. In addition, it could build on pre-existing relationships between the four arts organisations and on the will of the respective senior management to deepen these relationships with joint projects. At the outset, the overall concept for the project seemed relatively straightforward: to build a website and app that marketed reduced-price tickets to a younger audience. The technology partner tictoc were comfortable with this idea and confident about the technical aspects. However, over the course of the project, it became clear that the collaboration of four distinct arts organisations created more challenges than the team had initially anticipated. Project Scope Had the project been undertaken within a single arts organisation, it could have launched relatively quickly into the technical development. However, with four arts organisations involved, technical development needed to be preceded by brand development activities. Although the Lyceum, Usher Hall, Traverse and Filmhouse had applied under the label Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, this label had so far only existed informally. It was more an expression of the four organisations intention to collaborate and create a shared identity rather than a label denoting anything more concrete. Importantly, the expression Edinburgh Cultural Quarter did not carry the brand attributes that were needed to feed into the technical development, for example a defined brand identity or core values. In developing the project and application, the four arts organisations had very much focused on the digital innovation and the potential it had for widening audience reach. Consequently, they had not realised how much work would be needed to translate an informal name and joint intention into a brand and how crucial this brand would be for developing the actual digital innovation. It was not until they worked with tictoc on the finer brief of developing the website and app that these omissions came to bear. They were addressed by changes to the project plan and deadlines, and by bringing in design agency IDMD. While a detour with respect to the innovation project in its narrower sense, these challenges and the way the project leads dealt with them provided valuable lessons for multiorganisational collaborations on digital innovation. Technical Infrastructure The project also faced technical challenges as a result of the involvement of multiple organisations. 30 Initially, Culture Juice was meant to be an Amazon-style one-stop-shop website. Users were meant to purchase discounted tickets for either of the participating four venues directly through the site. In addition, the plan was to have a you might also like-functionality that would suggest other potentially interesting events. This functionality was to allow for cross-promotion across the different art forms offered by the four venues. For instance, a user who purchased tickets for a Shakespeare play one month might be alerted to discounted tickets for a film-adaptation of a Shakespeare play the next. However, the four venues different box office systems turned out to be incompatible, which made it impossible to develop such a one-stop-shop webpage. Instead, the website now features discount codes which must then be used on the respective arts organisations website. Although a workable compromise, this solution is less optimal than the one30

Interview with Shirley Monteith, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, 28th November 2012.

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stop-shop option for two reasons. Firstly, it is more cumbersome for the user and the likelihood of losing the user en route from advertisement to purchase is higher. Secondly, data on users cannot be stored in one overall data base and is thus less easily accessible. Such a joint-up data base is not only useful for general marketing purposes but would also form the basis for the you might also likefunctionality. A supplementary technological solution is therefore needed to collate purchase data from the four organisations and exploit it for future use. For Culture Juice itself, the incompatibility of box office systems resulted in less than optimal outcomes. It certainly caused frustration for the 31 project leads. In terms of wider impact, however, the difficulties encountered on the project appear to have reignited previous plans by the City Council and the organisations Chief Executives for the 32 development of a shared box office system across several of Edinburghs arts venues in the future. Organisational Policies Different organisational policies and commitments across the venues also challenged the project. The discounts offered on the Culture Juice website may be constrained by existing contracts held by some of the venues with external users of their space, such as touring companies, which are not necessarily within their control. The Usher Hall, for example, has promoters for the concerts it puts on 33 that it would need to consult about the potential to offer discounts. Also, the Traverse hosts productions by visiting companies and its contracts would need to be assessed on a case by case basis with regard to whether it could offer discounts. In contrast, the Lyceum produces all its shows and thus has full control over its pricing and what discounts it is able to offer. Additionally, the Lyceum has relatively long runs for each play, which allowed Shirley Monteith to plan discounts around particular performances that may be quieter. The Usher Hall, in contrast, often puts on events for one night only, while the runs of plays at the Traverse are often just one week. Filmhouse, in turn, had an extensive programme to work through to figure out which films it could offer discounts to. Each of the venues, then, had different aspects to manage and the website needed to be able to cope with all of these differing commitments and organisational policies. While such commitments could compromise the success of the project, they could equally serve to have a wider impact on the organisations, encouraging them to rethink and revise their organisational policies. Project Organisation All of the projects funded by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland, but especially those like Culture Juice, where more than one arts organisation collaborated with one or more technology partners, are typical examples of the transorganisational production that characterises the arts and culture (Eikhof 2014). In transorganisational production, teams come together for a limited period of time to work on a specific output. The team members who work on those collaborations have to, at all times, take the organisational and sectoral context into account, from different venues policies to sector events such as Edinburghs festivals, professional networks and labour markets. In the arts and culture sector, collaborations are typically much more open to such sector-wide and transorganisational influences than in other industries. Culture Juice proved a case in point. The four project leads had strong and democratic working relationships and were committed to delivering a project that they felt could address what were key marketing concerns for their respective organisations. Nevertheless, organising the teams activities and communication was often difficult given project leads commitments within their organisations. On a practical level, it was hard to schedule suitable times for all to meet and work on the project due to different workloads and seasonal demands. Towards the end of the funded period, all four organisations were preparing to take part in large
31 32

Interview with Shirley Monteith, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, 28th November 2012. Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013. 33 Interview with Shirley Monteith, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, 28th November 2012.

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festivals, including the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Fringe and the Edinburgh Festival, which heightened these scheduling difficulties. The project also faced delays due to changes in staff. Although a regular occurrence in arts and culture organisations, which typically have high staff turnover (Eikhof 2013), staff changes are difficult to predict and even more difficult to premeditate against. What is more, when they do happen, staff changes in arts and culture tend to have a particularly high impact on project progress (Caves 2000). Moreover, at the beginning of the project the focus on the actual digital innovation and what it could deliver distracted from the extent of the programme of work that would be required for Culture Juice. When in Spring 2013 it became apparent that the project needed more dedicated management and in particular coordination capacities, the four project leads considered various voluntary schemes with 34 the aim of hiring someone whose primary role would be to coordinate the Culture Juice site. Ross Perth of the Filmhouse carried out further research into these voluntary schemes but, ultimately, no 35 suitable scheme was identified. In hindsight, the appointment of a dedicated project manager right 36 from the start may have helped to reduce these organisational challenges. In addition, a dedicated project manager could have had more capacity to act as a project champion and draw in key stakeholders during early stages of the project. However, such a post would have had to be properly costed and resourced. Not all funding schemes allow for staff costs to be included, and securing an agreement for pro-rata funding from each of the participating organisations tends to be notoriously difficult. A key learning from Culture Juice, however, is that while focusing on project management may not be a terribly exciting aspect of project development, building in and securing enough management resource for a project can emerge as pivotal. Learning from Culture Juice In the four areas discussed above project scope, technical infrastructure, organisational policies and project organisation Culture Juice encountered substantial challenges. Some of these challenges were successfully dealt with while others required compromises to the efficiency or efficacy of project outcomes. An important insight from Culture Juice, and one that offers significant learning potential for other arts organisations, is that these challenges ultimately resulted from a key strength of the project having unintended side effects. A strength of Culture Juice is that it was conceived and developed with real enthusiasm for the project on the part of all four arts organisations and the technology partner. The project leads recognised exciting opportunities to explore a digital innovation that could address core marketing concerns and at the same time deepen a welcome and promising multi-organisation partnership. As a consequence, the project development focused on the digital innovation i tself, a digital solution that 37 [would] allow each of the partners to work together to target and engage specific audiences. Discussions centred on website design and functionalities and on how they could offer new opportunities for marketing arts and culture in Edinburgh. However, the unintended consequence of focusing on the digital innovation itself was that the context in which this digital innovation was to be brought about slid out of view. As the project leads later discovered, collaborating on this project with four arts organisations meant that project scope, technical infrastructure, organisational policies and project organisation were all sources of challenges that would have been unlikely to substantially impact a one-organisation-project. With four partner organisations though, the challenges in these areas amplified each other and significantly impacted the project.
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Field notes from project meeting with Shirley Monteith, Ross Perth, Rebecca McGann, Tessa MacGregor, Lianne Whitelaw (who has now left the project), Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, April 2013. 35 Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013. 36 Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013. 37 Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland Application, April 2012.

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The project leads addressed the challenges as they arose, but it is likely that anticipating, at the project start, how the context of the innovation might impact on the innovation itself would have allowed dealing with challenges more proactively and effectively. It would be easy to misread the story of Culture Juice as one of focusing on the work itself rather than its management an approach that is common in the arts and culture (e.g. Bilton 2007). However, the emphasis of the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland itself was squarely on digital innovation and its potential for the arts and culture. While the context of innovation was never explicitly excluded or delineated as not interesting, the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland was looking for projects that were bold, innovative and imaginative. The aim was to explore digital innovation and its potential for the arts and culture, and Culture Juice did just that. Its main outcome has not been a fully functioning digital ticketing solution. Its main outcome is a wealth of learning about the context arts organisations need to create if they aim to develop and implement digital innovation especially if they seek to do so in a multiorganisation project. Lessons Learned It is important to be ambitious in terms project aims and, but simultaneously, to be realistic in terms of operation and project management. Allocating dedicated blocks of time to working on the project is crucial for the project to be effective. Record core values, principles and mechanics of the project for both strategy and delivery. Such records can help ensure integrity and consistency while also maximising the efficiency and effectiveness of continuous decisions-making processes. They will also minimise any disruptions caused by changes in team members. A clear focus from the outset is important in order to effectively utilise the limited time available for planning and execution. If a project involves collaboration between multiple arts organisations, the appointment of a project manager to oversee project activity can be helpful.

5. Future
At the end of the funded period, a key next step was securing buy-in from the sales teams of the four organisations. These will be the people who would be centrally involved in selling the discounted offers and dealing with customers, so their enthusiasm and knowledgeable support were seen as vital to the projects success. To raise awareness of Culture Juice, the project team planned to hold a large meeting to present the project so far to staff from all four venues, thereby encouraging investment in the project across the wider organisations and enabling staff to clearly visualise the benefits of the four venues working together. Once the site is populated with content and marketed to the desired youth demographic, the project partners will need to undertake further research to assess if Culture Juice has achieved its original aims of diversifying the four arts organisations audiences. It would be valuable for the Edinburgh Cultural Quarter and for the arts and culture sector overall, to understand if a tool such as Culture Juice can indeed target youth audiences more specifically, deepen their engagement with cultural offerings and thus increase respective revenue streams from sales to young people. In that context it would also be interesting to further explore users responses to and experiences o f the Culture Juice site. In addition, the project partners would need to evaluate whether Culture Juice is capable of targeting the discounts exclusively at the desired youth audience, without existing full-paying audiences taking advantage of the reduced-price ticketing. The brand identity was seen as crucial to minimising this 13

risk. The brand Culture Juice was specifically created with a youthful demographic in mind and the plan was to keep the marketing low-key and minimal, directly targeting youth-oriented events such as Edinburgh Universities Freshers Fair. However, post-launch evaluation would need to establish if this strategy has been effective or if there is a risk of Culture Juice cannibalising revenue streams from established audiences. The Culture Juice project has also prepared the ground for future marketing initiatives in the Edinburgh Cultural Quarter organisations. Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor expect the successful collaboration between the marketing departments of the four arts venues to have laid the foundation for future cooperative working relationships and for the development of a coherent brand 38 identity for Edinburghs Cultural Quarter. As explained above, Culture Juice also offers a range of 39 valuable lessons for collaboration between arts venues in other cities, such as Glasgow or Dundee. Finally, Culture Juice may have also laid the foundations for future partnerships between one or more of the arts organisations and tictoc. The project leads all spoke very positively about their relationship with the technology partner and would be keen to collaborate again with either tictoc or another digital technology provider. However, such collaborations would be dependent on the availability of 40 additional funding. Tictoc intend to draw on their experience with the project to expand their work in 41 the arts and culture sector and grow their business in this area.

6. Further resources
Further project information
Culture Juice is available from http://www.culturejuice.com/what-is-culture-juice The Lyceums website is http://www.lyceum.org.uk/ The Usher Halls website is http://www.usherhall.co.uk/ The Traverses website is http://www.traverse.co.uk/ Filmhouses website is http://www.filmhousecinema.com/ The website of tictoc is available from http://www.tictocfamily.com/

Tools and guidance

Digital technologies for Audience Engagement: For an introduction to digital marketing and younger demographic, please see http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2012/oct/25/future-marketing-youth

38 39 40

Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013. Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013. Interview with Shirley Monteith and Tessa MacGregor, Edinburgh Cultural Quarter, June 2013. 41 Interview with Kerry Reid, tictoc, 22nd January 2013.

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As the growth of mobile apps increases, organisations are encouraged to think outside the box for engaging with their audiences using such technologies. One of these out of the box strategies is the 42 use of Snapchat for audience engagement. Interesting snapchat campaigns for engaging with audiences are: Co-operative Travel (http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1209564/co-op-claimsretail-first-snapchat-campaign) Betfair (http://www.theuksportsnetwork.com/betfair-become-the-first-betting-company-to-usesnapchat ) Unilever-Lynx (http://www.tmw.co.uk/news-and-blog/posts/2013/07/05/news-andblogposts20130705the-lynx-snapchat-experiment-how-lynx-used-snapchat-to-engage-withfans) Taco Bell and Karmaloop (http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/brand-flashingboobs-and-butt-snapchat-152132)

Theatre and digital: For information on using digital media to attract youth to theatres, please see http://community.nationaltheatrewales.org/profiles/blogs/attracting-youth-audiences Contact theatre in Manchester made it their ambition to become a globally digital organisation that would support their engagement with young people (http://contactmcr.com/about/what-wedo/ambitions/globally-digital/). There is a case study on their digital technology strategy that illustrates this further: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/ambition-downloads/15345328-Contact-Theatre.pdf Social Media is identified as an important element of theatre marketing. A report on engaging digital in the arts can be found at http://nitheatre.co.uk/2013/07/29/the-future-of-digital-in-the-arts/ In a similar vein to the ECQ Project, Pitlochtry Theatre have recognised the importance of embedding a digital strategy into their theatre and its operations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sd44IVEo0w&feature=player_embedded

Further reading
Bilton, C. (2007), Management and creativity. From creative industries to creative management, Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Caves, R.E. (2000), Creative industries, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Eikhof, D.R. (2014) The transorganisational context of creative production: Challenges for individuals and management, in C. Bilton and S. Cummings, Handbook of Management and Creativity, Edward Elgar. Eikhof, D.R. (2013) Making a living from creativity: Careers, employment and work in the creative industries, in J. Chan and K. Thomas, Handbook of Research on Creativity, Edward Elgar. Hesmondhalgh, D. (2007), The cultural industries, London: Sage.

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http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-platforms/examples-snapchat-campaigns/ http://www.themarketer.co.uk/how-to/snapchat-for-brands/ http://www.samweston.co.uk/eight-great-examples-of-snapchat-marketing/

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Other examples
In an effort to reach younger audiences, the London Symphony Orchestra, via funding from the English scheme of the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts, created the LSO Pulse app, a ticketing and loyalty scheme specifically for students. For further information, please see http://digitalrndfund.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/lso-pulse-app-mobile-apps-qr-codes-problem-papertickets/. For updated information on the LSO Pulse app, please see http://lso.co.uk/students The National Theatre of Scotlands project in collaboration with Flip Disability Equality in the Arts and We Are Everyone and also created via the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts in Scotland was similarly underpinned by the attempt to increase audience reach, specifically in the theatre sector. For further information, please see http://www.nesta.org.uk/news/national-theatre-scotland-open-eyes-and-earsnew-audiences-after-innovation-award

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